Paris-based Vianova bags €6M from Baloise, others to solve complex mobility challenges

Paris-based Vianova, a collaborative mobility data platform, announced on Thursday that it has secured €6M in a Series A round of funding led by Baloise.

Other investors in the round include La Poste Ventures, operated by XAnge, RATP Capital Innovation, Ponooc, and Contrarian Ventures. 

Vianova says it will use the funds to grow its team, accelerate global expansion, and further develop its mobility data platform. 

Thibault Castagne, co-founder and CEO at Vianova, says, “We started Vianova with the simple idea of bridging the data gap between public authorities (cities) and private transport providers (ride-hailing, shared mobility companies), yet this vision has since grown as we serve more and more use cases and customer segments.”

“Today’s funding and the insight our new investors bring will help us continue this growth. It will move us towards our ultimate vision of becoming the most-trusted, multi-sided agnostic data platform, where mobility data producers and mobility data customers meet, collaborate, and trade information to solve their challenges while improving the lives of citizens,” he adds.

The announcement comes over a year after raising €2.6M in a Seed round of funding. 

Vianova: What you need to know

Founded in 2019 by Thibault Castagne, Thibaud Febvre, and Frédéric Robinet, Vianova aims to provide public authorities and private organisations with the tools and data to solve the most complex mobility challenges. 

The French company uses cloud-based mobility analytics software to leverage IoT (Internet of Things) and data from 1M+ connected vehicles daily to provide stakeholders with the most advanced geo-intelligence. 

Consequently, fleet managers, policymakers, urban planners, data scientists, underwriters, and more can use this data to gain insights and analytics on their services via customisable dashboards, and also through shared, collaborative insights via Vianova’s Data Exchange. 

Vianova says it has created 120 new geofenced slow-speed, no-go, and incentivised parking hubs for riders in Brussels,. As a result, the infrastructure reduced pavement clutter and street patrols by 30 per cent.

Vianova claims that mobility operators use its insights to position their fleets in the right areas at the right time, capture demand, and increase use. Also, the platform helps understand fleet usage better, enabling mobility operators to anticipate fleet rebalancing and battery swaps.

In collaboration with leading car manufacturers, the company recently developed a Road Safety dashboard powered by machine learning to identify road risks and help cities prioritise their Vision Zero (zero road incidents by 2030) investments and strategies.

Guillermo Forteza, investment manager at Baloise, says, “From a strategic standpoint, Vianova has the potential to act as a key enabler and amplifier in the mobility ecosystem of Baloise by exploring data partnerships with both our portfolio companies and Baloise insurance core. Insurance as an industry needs effective, up-to-the-minute data so it can better serve its customers, and nowhere is this more necessary than when it comes to transport.”

He adds, “Vianova is building the essential data infrastructure to transform transport and logistics insurance, through the development of its collaborative platform, where cities, operators, and insurers can work together to realise the far-reaching potential and benefits of mobility innovation. The team and the technology that Thibault, Thibaud, and Frédéric have built have the power and scale to enable this future, and we’re thrilled to be investing in them at such an exciting time.”